


I'm Not Sure That I'm Okay, But I Get Stronger Every Day

by found_the_good_things



Category: We Are The Tigers - Allen
Genre: Gen, also she probably cusses so there's that, mattie went through some shit too, she's trying to get better even though it's hard, validate her
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-17
Updated: 2020-09-17
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:00:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26511790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/found_the_good_things/pseuds/found_the_good_things
Summary: August 21st, 2018.9:18 PM.16 Hartcourt, Salem, Massachusetts.A drunk girl, just 14, faces five of the other girls on her cheer team. There's blood on her face from where she hit her head on the sink. She dimly wonders where the two other girls are, but that worry is quickly forgotten when the captain reveals a bloody knife.---Mattie's been released from juvie, but that doesn't mean she's free.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 29





	I'm Not Sure That I'm Okay, But I Get Stronger Every Day

Mattie Wheeler had two routines.

The first one was the one her mother and father and younger siblings saw. The one where she woke up at 6:45, showered, got dressed, ate breakfast, brushed her teeth, and went to school.

The second one was the one only she and her therapist saw. The one where she woke up to her brain supplying the prison alarm bell, where she timed her showers, where she was careful to not pick anything orange to wear, where all her food looked like the tasteless gruel she got in juvie.

Sometimes, she would be sitting in class, thinking about practice or her chores or anything else, and then the bell would ring and she'd flinch because it sounded like the prison bell.

Mattie went to school, she went to practice, she went to clubs, and she smiled. She said she was going to be okay, because that's what the rest of the team said, right? Like their first practice. They all read the notes they'd written and Kate had talked about expectations and Annleigh had talked about moving on and they said they were going to be okay because they had to be.

_I will be okay._

_I have to be._

Mattie told herself that every day.

She didn't really believe it anymore.

She didn't _feel_ okay. She got overwhelmed easy, she couldn't wear anything orange - her cheer uniform felt like torture - and she still felt like she wasn't free, like there was a part of her still in that dark, cramped cell with guards who never smiled and thought she'd killed three people.

(Chess had been the only one who'd smiled at Mattie all night that night. The others had given her a brief grin when she was introduced and then ignored her. Chess was the only one who kept smiling at her, besides Riley, but Riley's smile was fake and Chess's wasn't.)

(Mattie wouldn't have killed Chess. Mattie would never kill anyone.)

They’d wanted her to testify against Riley, but she refused. She couldn't be in another courtroom, even if she wasn't the defendant this time, because she would walk in and it would feel like she was the defendant all over again.

Reese texted her when it was over and they'd issued Riley's sentence. Life with the option for parole after twenty years.

(Mattie had only gotten fifteen years, and she'd been so scared Riley would get the same. But Mattie had been fourteen and drunk, and Riley was a few days past her eighteenth birthday and completely sober, and so her sentence was worse.)

_Please don’t let her get parole._

After the trial, Mattie blasted music in her headphones and she laid on her bed and stared at the ceiling, thinking about that night, about seeing her blood on her hands and falling to the floor of the basement and then… nothing. In juvie, she used to search her memory for stabbing Farrah and Chess, sure that if she’d done it, it was in there somewhere. Turns out all those nights staring at the wall and imagining what it must have sounded like when Chess and Farrah screamed were for naught.

After her trial, her parents had packed up all of her stuff and gotten rid of most of what they thought she wouldn’t need fifteen years in the future, when she was released, and everything else was left in the garage, packed up in neat boxes with labels like “pictures” and “trophies” and “books,” remnants of the girl Mattie was before the sleepover. And then she’d come home and she’d needed those clothes and those chargers and everything else that had gotten thrown out.

Mattie’s mom had taken her shopping and tried to spin it as a fun mother-daughter day. “You’re going to get so many new clothes!” she’d said excitedly. Mattie had smiled and said thank you and wished her parents hadn’t given away her favorite soft t-shirt.

She’d gotten a brand new laptop, too. A ridiculously fancy, shiny Macbook she had no idea how to use. She’d smiled and said thank you and wished for her old, slow Chromebook that froze every few minutes and had been so familiar.

She’d gotten to paint her room, all by herself. Her siblings begged to help, but this was something Mattie had to do on her own. She needed to be alone and play music and just think for a while, think about paint colors and which brush to use and oh, _shit_ , did she get it on the carpet?

(She’d started cursing in prison and now she couldn’t stop.)

Once it was done, when all her furniture was back in place and her room was neat and clean, Mattie looked around and for a second, felt a sense of accomplishment, which was followed by wondering what she was supposed to do with herself now that her biggest distraction was gone.

The first day she went back to school, everyone knew who she was.

(She’d never actually attended even a day of school - the sleepover, and the framing-her-for-murder, had happened before the year had even started.)

And now instead of the talented, youngest cheerleader on the team, Mattie was known as the girl who got blamed for the murder of three kids.

 _I didn’t kill them!_ she wanted to scream _. I would never hurt anyone!_

She didn’t, though. She kept her head down and made sure she was invisible, trying in vain to block out the whispers. She stopped going anywhere without earbuds, not listening to a word of whatever song was playing, wondering if she wanted to know what people were saying about her.

There were days when she had to know, when she paused her music but kept her headphones in and pretended she wasn’t listening so they’d let their guard down, and there were days when kids tapped her on the shoulder and suggested she turn the volume down because they could hear what she was listening to.

She had to meet with the counselor every Friday, before school. The counselor was nice, Mattie guessed. She was pretty young, with a warm smile and a gentle voice, and always let Mattie guide the conversation, even if that mostly resulted in Mattie staring at her knees, suffocating in the silence, unable to get herself to say even a “good morning.”

During practice, Mattie barely spoke. She’d react to what the other girls were saying, she tried to forgive them, tried to befriend them. Some days it was easier than others. Some days she could crack up at something Reese had said and look at the other five girls and consider them friends. Other days all she could hear was Cairo telling Riley, “it’s just defense” as they tied Mattie up.

(She used to hear those words in her dreams, but dismiss them as a figment of her imagination. They didn’t fit the elaborate story Cairo had woven and that Riley, Kate, Reese, and Annleigh had told.)

(They didn’t use the word “defense” when they cheered anymore. They even barely used it in conversation. Eva did, once - she’d said “in my defense” - and Cairo had glared at her.)

Mattie really did try to be normal again. She tried not to feel sorry for herself, told herself the other girls had had it worse, locked in a basement with a murderer (and in Kate’s case, stabbed), but then she remembered that she’d spent a semester scared out of her mind and beginning to resent the color orange, and she didn’t feel bad for them anymore.

She slept. She ate. She went to school, went to practice, went home, did homework. She played games with her little siblings and hung out with her dad.

She was going to be okay. She promised herself that every single day.

_I’ll be okay._

Some days, she felt hopeless, like nothing would ever be okay again.

And some days she felt a little bit better.

And as the years went on and the good days happened more and more often, Mattie stood a little straighter, got a little stronger, and smiled.


End file.
